Location of U.S. Manufacturing, 1987-2014: A New Dataset

Abstract

A major challenge in research on agglomeration of economic activity is acquiring information on the location of production and service facilities. Here, we present a new way of locating U.S. manufacturing based on the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The TRI lists all industrial facilities with name, zipcode and county since 1987. We match the TRI data to publicly listed companies in the financial database, Compustat. This dataset enables researchers to locate U.S. industrial facilities.

Keywords: manufacturing, locations

JEL Classification: L6